Nominating Committee has gathered under the Spirit several times since the clerk's last report to Yearly Meeting sessions last summer. In that time the committee made 70 queries of Friends to serve on Standing Committees or Yearly Meeting external and affiliated organizations. 13 Friends who were asked to serve, accepted. For the same time in 1998/1999, 90 queries to serve were made to Friends, of which 32 accepted. Clearly the performance of the committee has slipped somewhat. Several factors probably account for this; more time spent deliberating on issues, a lack of full representation on the committee from the Quarters, and a limit that has been reached on the part of Nominating Committee members regarding our knowledge of our Quarterly Meeting members. It is hoped that these factors are indeed at play and not the possible scenario that Friends in Yearly Meeting are unwilling to make the commitment to do Standing Committee work.
A great deal of our time has been devoted to discussing issues that have arisen as a result of the change in structure of the Yearly Meeting. Some of those issues were: what to do with Friends whose appointments to Standing Committee have become problematic, a self-examination of the way which Nominating Committee recruits appointees, a concern over the workload of current Standing Committee appointees, and a concern over how Friends in the Yearly Meeting view the nominating process. Several projects arose out of these discussions: Standing Committee resignation feedback, Talent and Interest Database development, handbook revisions, a formal Standing Committee reappointment policy, and a Yearly Meeting workshop on the nominating process. All of this has helped make the committee a more concerned presence in the Yearly Meeting, giving us an opportunity to help shepherd this new structure into being.
The committee has completed work on the following issues:
1- Policy on Reappointment process - Nominating Committee has sent to the Standing Committees a procedure they can follow if there are members whose reappointment might be seen as problematic. Basing our discussions on some criticism of what was done with reappointment last year, the committee built into the process more time that would review appropriate clerk and committee feedback while also allowing for Nominating's consideration of the particular appointee's point of view.
2- Feedback analysis on Standing Committees resignations - Since the inception of the Standing Committee structure almost 3 years ago, there have been 41 resignations. If we count the Friends who chose not to be reappointed last year and this year, those resignations total 56. In this clerk's last report that figure was 31. Nominating Committee has sent, and continues to send, out a feedback survey to Friends who have resigned or chose not to return to service. The survey contains a checkoff list of plausible reasons for resignation with space for comments. Those "reasons" fall into two basic categories; 1-committee work conflicts with personal responsibilities or 2- there are perceived problems with the committee. So far we have received 35 replies to our survey. 71% of the responses fall into the first category while 29% fall into the second. The survey tells us perhaps the obvious: some Standing Committees are having growing pains and, more critically, our lives are so busy that, for many of us, there may not be enough room left for Yearly Meeting work.
3- Promotion of a Talent and Interests Database - Over the last 2 years a database has been maintained that includes the interests and skills of about 500 Friends and attenders of the Yearly Meeting. This data was culled from an "Opportunities" survey produced and distributed by Thomas Jeavons to the Yearly Meeting in 1998. Several working groups and Standing Committees have used the database successfully for recruitment purposes. This fall Nominating Committee used the database also and found it very useful. However the database was limited because the sample from Yearly Meeting was too small and some information needed updating. A new member to Nominating Committee came under the weight of this concern and took it up. A sub committee was formed and their work, along with Thomas Jeavons' support, has brought forward a new version of the survey.
This survey will be distributed at Yearly Meeting sessions and mailed out to all members of Yearly Meeting. Nominating Committee members will be urging Friends and attenders in their Quarterly Meetings to participate in this survey with the goal of increasing the size of the database, thereby making it a more effective tool to all the committees of Yearly Meeting, as well as to Monthly and Quarterly Meetings. Currently there is a commitment on the part of Thomas Jeavons and this committee to maintain the database using both staff and volunteer resources.
The clerk now wishes to share some concerns and make some "visioning" comments
As was alluded to earlier in this report, we may be having difficulty recruiting Friends into the Standing Committee process because of the "busyness" of our lives. It is entirely possible that Friends are not listening to the call to service as they once did in the past. If this is the case then the organizational life of our Yearly Meeting will need to wait until a period of "renewal" goes on amongst us, a renewal which supports spiritual and communal service over the pleasures of individual self-fulfillment. Let us hope that this is not the case because Philadelphia Yearly Meeting has just gone through an extensive restructuring whose existence depends heavily on volunteer involvement.
It is also entirely possible that there are a number of "calls" to service being met already and that Friends are stretched thin over too many good causes. Anecdotally, we can say that this is the case. Time and again, Nominating Committee members have approached worthy candidates, only to be met with a long litany of solid responsibilities already being done. It is very hard to suggest to a school teacher who is committed to the local PTA and running the Meeting's First Day School while at the same time doing volunteer work for Habitat for Humanity, to give up a full Saturday a month for a committee meeting and some other time for subcommittee work.
Of course this has always been the dilemma of being a Quaker, how to stretch yourself thin enough to meet all that God requires of us. But the concern is raised here because now our organizing process requires even more volunteer effort at the oversight level. A suggestion would be this: the Yearly Meeting needs to provide more funding for support staff for the individual Standing Committees, a support staff which eases some of the administrative and clerical duties of the Standing Committee members. Such staff should attend all major Standing Committee meetings and handle the transcribing and distribution of minutes, as well as copying and mailing responsibilities. If the staff person were an administrator, she/he would also function as a liaison to the administrative team at the central office, providing a connection to the obvious and not so obvious resources that exist there.
Another suggestion would be this: Philadelphia Yearly Meeting should make fuller use of Internet resources, providing at the very least, an email account for all Standing Committee members who want one, and access to an Internet website which stores all the relevant documents that are necessary or helpful to the functioning of the committee. If you combined this suggestion with a staffperson whose job it was to transcribe all committee materials into data files, post and update those files onto a website, and notify by email the relevant participants, you have the beginnings of a process that not only eases the burden of a committee person, but also starts to tie in the outlying geographic Meetings more closely into the organizational life of the Yearly Meeting.
A third and final suggestion would be for the Yearly Meeting to institute a fund that would provide overnight accommodation reimbursement to Friends traveling from a distance to do Standing Committee work. This fund should be easy to use, requiring very few bureaucratic steps for reimbursement (i.e., a clerk's note to a PYM staffperson would release funds to a recipient). This would be a more immediate approach than the one used by the Pemberton Fund. Friends could choose to use the hospitality of local Quakers (those who signed up for hospitality through the Talent and Interest Survey), but such a fund would be helpful to those Friends uncomfortable with that choice. Like the suggestion above this one offers our far away members more options for being part of the life of our Yearly Meeting.
These of course are just suggestions and they are not made to the General Secretary but to the Yearly Meeting as a whole body. They are costly suggestions that require extra resources. We may need to wait for those resources until that period of renewal amongst Friends takes place whereby spiritual and communal agendas gain precedence in Friends lives.
The clerk wishes to end this report with a bit of visioning for the Yearly Meeting Nominating Committee. We are the Friends who are laboring under God's spirit to discern those who have the appropriate gifts and the time to do the work that makes our Yearly Meeting function. We make use of certain tools to do that process; a database, our contacts in the Quarterly Meetings and our knowledge of our fellow Friends and attenders. It is very easy to get caught up in the mechanics of the selection process and to place an emphasis on "filling slots" or "plugging holes in the dike" as we scramble to shore up the available positions before us. We all come to our meetings hoping to find more Friends willing to do work. But our work goes farther than that. Service on Nominating Committee requires its members to consider how the environment is functioning to which we are appointing and it requires an intimate knowledge of that environment. So our questions to Standing Committee members are always in this vein: How is your work going?, Is it beyond your expectations?, Is the clerking going well?, Are you getting what you need to function?
Service on the Nominating Committee also requires that its members be out in their Quarterly Meetings observing and absorbing the talents and concerns of the Friends who are attending there. The questions we carry with us to Quarterly Meeting would be: What is your view of service?, what is your view of Yearly Meeting?, what is your view of Standing Committee or working group work?
When we have answers to these questions, from both sides of the Yearly Meeting structure, then our work takes on more of a concerned character and tone, with an "overseer" type quality to it. We are then able to look at the organizational life of the Yearly Meeting and discern whether it is functioning in a healthy manner. It is this overseer mentality to which Nominating Committee is being called, one which seeks to bring the new structure into a more careful alignment with the spirit of the Friends which it is supposed to serve. The clerk asks that Quarterly Meetings consider this when appointing their representatives to serve on Yearly Meeting Nominating Committee.
The clerk also asks that Quarterly Meetings send to Nominating Committee their full compliment of representatives. We currently operate with 22 members out of an allowed compliment of 46. We like the Standing Committees, operate with a lot of energy but at half strength.
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